Even though superconducting diode effect (SDE) has garnered significant attention due to its potential applications in superconducting electronics, the role of disorder scattering in SDE has rarely been considered, despite its potential qualitative impact, as we demonstrate. We investigate SDE in a disordered Rashba superconductor under an in-plane magnetic field, employing a self-consistent Born approximation to derive the corresponding Ginzburg-Landau theory. Our analysis reveals two surprising effects. First, in the strong Rashba SOC regime, disorder becomes the driving mechanism of SDE, which vanishes in its absence. In this case, we show that disorder-induced mixing of singlet and triplet superconducting orders underlies the effect. Second, in the weak Rashba spin-orbit coupling (SOC) regime, disorder can reverse the direction of the diode effect, indicated by a sign change in the superconducting diode efficiency coefficient.
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Even though superconducting diode effect (SDE) has garnered significant attention due to its potential applications in superconducting electronics, the role of disorder scattering in SDE has rarely been considered, despite its potential qualitative impact, as we demonstrate. We investigate SDE in a disordered Rashba superconductor under an in-plane magnetic field, employing a self-consistent Born approximation to derive the corresponding Ginzburg-Landau theory. Our analysis reveals two surprising effects. First, in the strong Rashba SOC regime, disorder becomes the driving mechanism of SDE, which vanishes in its absence. In this case, we show that disorder-induced mixing of singlet and triplet superconducting orders underlies the effect. Second, in the weak Rashba spin-orbit coupling (SOC) regime, disorder can reverse the direction of the diode effect, indicated by a sign change in the superconducting diode efficiency coefficient.